Promised Land
by Last of the Lilac Wine
Summary: Bess Wyatt is burnt at the stake for heresy in 1557, England, but instead of the land her religion promised her, she finds herself at the icy hell of the Wall.
1. A Change In Climate

**A/N **I've known I've wanted to write a Game Of Thrones story for a while, but haven't been able to decide on the angle. Anyway, this is something a little bit different. Let me know if it works or, y'know, if it doesn't.

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_It is the year 1557 in Tudor England. _

_Queen Mary I occupies the throne and her Catholic religious policy has seen the restoration of heresy laws that condemn those who fail to accept Catholic beliefs and practices to death. _

_280 Protestants are burned to death in 46 months. Fifty-one were women._

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**CHAPTER 1: **A CHANGE IN CLIMATE

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_Tuesday June 14th, 1557 _

The light falls, unbroken and pure, through the bars on Bess's window. The cell walls are iridescent, peaceful. The small wind outside the tower dies and settles with irregularity, there is a stillness to the town.

She can hear her gaolers outside, betting on the crowds that will be drawn by the burnings tonight. Large, they think, because one of the five is the richest merchant in Maidstone and his two eldest are to burn with him.

Bess does not recognise the story, though she knows the detail.

The simplicity of the words do not correspond with the emotion. The 'rich merchant' does not capture her father with justice. George Wyatt is a brilliant man, a hard man - he can weigh up wool, money, a pound of pickled fish at a glance. He raised a mob against local enclosure only eight years ago, but could just as easily break a crowd of men with a glance. Tall, lined, now running to fat in places. Her father has a talent for getting his own way. She respects him and loves him with earnest.

The other to die will be her elder sister, Jane. But that is too painful to think on.

Bess finds she is tired. She has not slept since her detainment, and tries to speak to God now as she kneels down in the sunlight on her death-day.

God guide me she thinks to herself, closing her eyes. God help me. God save me.

She almost weeps when she only sees the large scarlet presence of fire in her inner eye.

* * *

They come as night falls. The sun has gone down; she will not see the dawn.

Bess strains to look out her window as the guards take her - but the sun is a clot of blood across the horizon - an ill omen.

She is led down tight spiralling stone stairs, but not outside, as she would have expected. The guard shoves her into a room empty save for a wooden table and two rickety seats.

"Sit," he says, forcing her roughly down onto the chair. The man can only be thirty. Freckled. He has a strip of sunburn across his forehead from the days summer sun.

Bess presses her lips together tightly and knits her hands together in her lap to stop them from shaking.

The man moves behind her and she hears him clattering round the room. What she takes to be a white sheet is suddenly thrown into her lap, but when she picks it up and runs the material through her fingers, she realizes the sheet has holes for her arms and head.

"Put it on, then" the man grunts at her hesitation, back in front of Bess again. "Wouldn't want that pretty dress singed, would we?"

To her surprise, he steps out the door whilst she changes. She had feared he wouldn't - and almost wishes he had stayed. Confirming him as evil; damning his soul. The act of propriety stands in stark contrast to her death sentence.

Bess struggles to take off her dress without her lady's maid, Helen. The rich, dark blue material is stiff, the buttons that run like jewels down her spine almost impossibly small. With difficulty the fabric finally falls in a heavy spool round her feet like an anchor and she kicks out of it, left naked and shaking. Then, she lifts a hand tentatively to the back of her skull and releases her hair from where it is gathered in her mother's pearl encrusted net. The tresses fall round her face, blonde and lank and dirty from the days spent in the cell. Bess clamped the pins in her hand so tightly tiny droplets of blood oozed from her fist. The dress, she knew, would inevitably be taken by the gaolers - there was nothing she could do about that. But her mother's pins had to go to her younger sister Margery. She would find a way somehow - before the end.

Her personal guard returns when she has the sheet on, this time with a priest. Though her attire scratches horribly, and is crawling with lice, Bess meets the priest's eye coldly.

Elderly, decrepit and part of a failing order, the white haired man examines her pityingly.

"I have come to pray for your soul, Bess Wyatt."

"My soul cannot be saved by you. It is God's, and God's alone to save."

The priest sighs, but does not sound surprised. He has heard words like these before by Protestants condemned to die.

"Nobody remembers a dead girl, my dear. You may think you will die a martyr, but you will be forgotten soon enough - rest assured."

Bess falters, and then in her minds eyes sees a buzzard falling out of the sky, leaving a trail of plumage behind it - her arrow in its belly. Her father's steady hand clasps her shoulder; she hears his approving words in her ears_. You are stronger than you think_."I should not have to die for my religion at all. But your Queen who you so love has condemned me to death. I will not renounce my faith for her - or you - ever."

She sneers when the priest then rises to leave. Her heart rushes at the tiny victory. He cannot turn her. He knows it.

Bess's smug look of triumph slips from her face like yolk falling from a cracked egg, however, when the priest turns to her freckled gaoler after glancing at her and says, gravely. "Shave her hair from her head before you burn her. And charge the fee for the ropes, wood and oil to the family - or what is left of it." He looks back at Bess, and then at her dress still lying at her feet. "After your Cromwell sold our monasteries, we are hard pressed for money, dear. You understand...The death of people like you, the death of you, will cleanse the realm of the old injustices of the Reformation."

She spat at his feet in reply.

* * *

The night is dark. It has spread like an ink stain across the grey sky like a living thing. There is already fire, too, everywhere Bess looks as she is led to the pier. Torches lit to guide her way. Torches held up in the crowd so they can see the spectacle better. They have parted like the sea to let her past.

There are open sores on her head from where her hair has been cut away too close to the scalp - weeping wounds of blood trickle down behind her ear and down her neck and then the blood dries there, sticky and thick against her skin. The air is cool on how bald head. Her blonde locks lie in a bucket back in the detainment room with her dress. Her mother's pins are still in her hand. Like a hand, Bess clutches it for comfort.

She takes a breath in. She prays, and her voice is soft and shaking.

Someone in the crowd here's the intones of the book of Common Prayer and jeers at her. She carries on, each word strung out like pearls on a string. Her faith, which she will die for.

_Amen_, Bess whispers, as she is pushed up onto the pier - her hands bound behind her to the stake. _Amen_.

A man she does not recognise is led out with her sister, whose face can only show shocked bewilderment at the crowd gathered.

"Bess!" Jane cries out, clutching for her sister's hand as she is tied behind her. Bess can feel her fingers scratching at her own.

"Jane," she returns, her voice cracking and her eyes watering as if the smoke already lines her throat. She feels the tremor that wracks through her sister's body. "Take courage, Jane," Bess croaks. "This isn't the end...This isn't the end."

Her father is led out from a direction she cannot see - she only hears Jane cries out, hears her father's deep baritone. She can feel his presence but can only see another man's shoulder if she twists her head to seek him out.

Bess realizes she will not see his face before death and so instead looks for her mother up in the stars.

The charges of heresy are read out - merely a formality. Damning ink that forms words that Bess will never see, but spell out her death. Someone else's idea of injustice, of what is wrong.

"Gabe Hooper...Rafe Mosse...George Wyatt and his daughters, Jane Wyatt and Bess Wyatt."

Injustice, Bess thinks, not removing her eyes from the sky_. Wrong_.

There is the sound of the crowd jostling. Yells of 'Protestant heretics' - but most are silent, watching modestly - awed, as the powerful fall before them.

Bess sees it out of the corner of her eye - the flame that will light the pier. Her heart constricts. She fixes her gaze on one single star and clutches Jane's ring finger with one of her own - all she can manage to reach.

There is a sound like compressed gas whistling through a keyhole and the fire catches in the wood at her feet.

But the burn is cold instead of hot, and the sky is white instead of black. Bess's hand reflexively falls open in surprise and the pins fall one by one. The world tilts forwards and she is jerked onto her hands and knees, her wrists suddenly unbound. Wind whips round her - filled with snow that catches in her eye-lashes and stings her face. A different kind of fire.

Bess realizes she is knelt deep in snow. The sky is snow. Everywhere she looks. White where there should have been red. White where there should have been black.

The only colour is the cold pink of her own skin. The stained yellow of the sheet she wears.

She cries out, jumping to her feet as if the snow has physically hurt her.

The wind seems to be screaming around her - louder and louder. The screams of the dying - cries of familiar voices - sisterly, fatherly.

"_Jane_!" Bess screams out as she scrambles to her feet. Her voice is no match for what whips around her - penetrates her skull, fills her ears and seeps in through her pores.

"_Jane_!" she cries again. "Father!"

But the wind only continues until it saps her of her strength. Until the cold freezes her to her bones.

"What hell is this?" Bess chokes out to the sky. "Why have you done this to me?"

She is a believer, but she still does not expect the voice that answers.


	2. Guard Your Tongue

**A/N **Thank you for all your wonderful reviews last chapter! Bess and her religion will be a recurring theme addressed as an arc through out this fic, so it will be a focal point. Jon appears in this chapter, and a little bit of Bess getting to know the world she's in, but mostly this is just building up an understanding of what a precarious position Bess is in.

Enjoy!

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**CHAPTER 2: **GUARD YOUR TONGUE

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"Hello?!"

Someone walks towards her - black ink in the milky white. The screaming around her quietens instantly - like a blanket thrown over to muffle a flame. Bess chokes on the silence and wraps her arms tightly round herself, as if to contain what little heat is left beneath her blue skin. Snow flakes crystalize on her exposed collarbones and arms. Freeze on her eyelashes.

If her father and sister were dead they were not in this place with her.

"Who's there?"

Bess seems to hardly breath. Her whole world stills for this one moment.

She watches the black as it moves towards her and understands; if she comes into contact with this thing, she will truly be elsewhere. Hell. Here. If she can just fade, withdraw...

Her heart rate speeds up. Her breathing turns fast. She spins and stumbles away, blindly on into the alien snow drifts. If she meets this man her fate will be sealed.

Half delirious with distraction and cold, Bess pictures herself dragging her body back through the numbing cold to the fire and the pier. Back to her death so she can die again. "God, have mercy!" she cries aloud.

But, again, the divine does not answer. It is someone else.

Her wrist is grasped - Bess screams, struggles, and flails out with her other fist - only for it to be caught in a similarly iron clasp. She is staring into the face of a toad. A man with a warty face, black beard and a look as tough as tree roots. "Who are you? What are you doing here?!" he says, harshly. The snow blows round them, catching in his beard. The blizzard is now so thick he has to squint through it to see her properly, making him look all the more ill-becoming.

"Let go of me!" Bess yells and struggles some more until he strikes her in the face hard. Only his grip on her other arm keeps her from falling back into the snow. He hits her again across the other cheek for good measure and Bess's head snaps in the other direction. She can only look at her assailant with wide eyes, her ears ringing. His expression is grim, but she detects a widening about the eyes as he takes in her appearance; her bald head and sheet. The look sets her at ease somewhat. There is bewilderment and pity there. The violence is not that of a man who wishes to do her harm; merely pragmatic. Like her, he just wants to understand.

The man looks at her searchingly for a second and then his gaze falls on her hand in his grip. Her fingers are star-fish splayed - spread wide as if all the muscles have suddenly gone rigidly into shock. Bess sees what he sees. Her ring and middle fingers are black from tip to knuckle. But it isn't frostbite. The skin has peeled away to reveal flesh - and the flesh is burned.

Before Bess can blink the man has a knife and the burnt, useless fingers are severed from her hand.

Her introduction to this new world is cruel.

* * *

Beneath her eyelids Bess sees the transitory colours her life has taken. Red for the fire. White for her rebirth. Black for her saviour. Red again, for the blood; for reality. Somehow, she is alive; not just her soul, but bodily, too. The flesh is living. The blood can be spilt.

She is surprised, then, that when she wakes she sees colour. Brown. A horse's flank. The smell is strong and overwhelming, yet comforting. Not comforting enough to distract her from the cold, however. Her body is wracked by shivers despite the blankets piled atop her - and where her face and head is exposed to the cutting wind the skin burns hot and cold simultaneously. Her lips burn, too. When she parts them experimentally the frozen, abused skin cracks and metallic blood stains her teeth. Bess gasps - a reflex - and brings her hand up to gingerly touch her lips; only to see it heavily bandaged. Three fingers and two stumps. No sound escapes her this time, but her stomach drops sickeningly.

She squeezes her eyes shut for a second and steals herself. Easier to pretend to sleep. Easier to sleep forever, perhaps, but instead she forces herself to roll onto her back and take in her surroundings.

Her surroundings are the fringes of a flinty, dark forest. The ground is craggy and uncomfortable beneath her - frostbitten and snowy in places, but mostly mud. Not the knee-deep drifts she had found herself in.

She is obviously in a camp, but at first glance it is empty. There is a fire, with a pot of stew steaming over it. There are bundles of blankets and firs - in a similar fashion to her own, where others must have slept. They are singularly medieval, however, and when Bess sniffs at her own furs, she finds that they stink of farmlands. Shit.

There are some twenty horses, a cage of ravens - but no people. With some trepidation, Bess wraps one of the less foul-smelling blankets round herself and rises. With almost lazy easy the cold pierces the grey material and her thin grey sheet, instantly freezing her to the bone. It knifes at her ankles and when she looks down at her feet she realizes with a thrill that they have been bandaged like her hand, too. When she wiggles her toes, she finds she can feel not one and tries to feel with her good hand if they are all there, but her fingers are swollen and will not bend.

Bess grits her teeth instead and shakily moves closer to the fire. It is a relief to feel its warmth, when it seems to her as if she will never be warm again, and the stew smells inviting. But as she moves closer to examine it more closely there is a feeling like ice breaking beneath her. Fear bubbles up her spine and her stomach twists itself into an impossibly tight knot. The flames do not crackle and the fire itself is relatively small, but there is something sinister about the quiet way in which it burns. Insidious. Bess stands, staring at it for a second, her body rigid as she struggles with her natural need for heat and the fear.

A flea crawls out of the blanket and up the back of her neck. Finally, Bess's lips tighten perceptibly and she moves back away from the fire, settling back onto her pile of blankets, her back against the big brown horse lying next to her for warmth. As she sits there, shivering - feeling as if she could die - Bess suddenly notices something she hadn't before: a young man, sat vigilantly with his back against one of the trees - a sword in his lap. Watching her.

Her heart jumps into her throat, but she is too bitter about the fire and the cold and being where she is to truly feel the fear it evokes.

He asks her if she would like more firs. Any stew. She replies in the negative, content to suffer.

"I only ask so you may feel better - " the young man - or is he a boy? - the more Bess looks at him, the less she can be sure. He is serious, for a boy, to be sure, but she is slightly smug to detect that he is not as hardened as he thinks he is. Not a man, yet. She can see it in the way his speech has already run to impatience.

"Am I a hostage?"

"No."

"Then why do you watch me?"

He fumbles for an answer. "If you ran off...you would die out in the cold by yourself."

It is a lie, and she sneers at it. There are others in the camp who are gone clearly for a reason. Perhaps to talk about her.

The young man misinterprets her look as sceptism and raises his chin slightly in defiance. "You will be dead out there out us," he snaps, harshly. "If Yoren hadn't -"

"Jesus, do you expect applause?" she says, bitterly.

He pauses. Something like confusion flitters across his face before the sentence is done. Something in its content he fails to understand. Those already dark, brooding brows crease over his eyes momentarily, but perceptibly. Jesus. In that moment, Bess realizes that her God is not known here. Not understood here. Perhaps, she reflects, that is why he did not answer her here.

The thought obliterates her cold exterior like a physical blow, and she feels more alone than ever.

She has died for her faith, but it seems it did not follow her into the afterlife it taught her so strongly to believe in.

Angry tears fall from Bess's eyes that she ducks her head to hide.

The boy is still watching her - carefully, intently. It is a look of one trying to understand something they have never seen before. It is not a look you gave a fellow human being. "What is your name?" he asks, eventually. Cautiously.

She composes herself so she can lift her head and look him in the eye. "Bess," she replies, and - when he does not seem inclined to give his own, she asks, with a bit of an edge - "and yours?"

"Jon Snow."

"An uncommon last name."

"Are you jesting with me?" he snaps, abruptly furious. Bess's eyebrows both raise as he rises to his feet in agitation.

"No -" she glances at the sword in his hand that he seems to have reflexively grabbed and her voice hardens, " - and sit down for Gods sake! I wont have you...waving that thing round in my face!"

He looks down at his sword, as if surprised to see it there, but does not sit. He looks at her face and then back at the sword and then back at her again. She wonders if he's considering using it.

"Are you a high born lady?"

"No, I'm a merchant's daughter." Bess prays that these medieval sheepherders she's found herself amongst have heard of a merchant.

"A merchant?" he asks, sceptically, looking her up and down. Bess bristles from where she sits. "What happened to you - to your? -" He's talking about her hair, and when she colours and looks down at her feet with shame, he colours with embarrassment. "I'm sorry," he mutters, looking determinedly somewhere over her left shoulder. "I shouldn't have said that. That's your business."

"No, it's -" Bess glances at him. She understands that danger of the enigma she poses him. The threat to her of being an unknown thing to them. She needs him to trust her, so she can stay safe. She needs to feed him information about her life in any way within the realms of belief, otherwise, she knows he will fill the void of her life with stories, anyway. She is an escaped prisoner. A refugee. A disgraced bedwarmer. "It was cut from my head," Bess says, her voice strained. "I was to be burnt for...a difference of opinion."

"By which Lord? There's no one round here for miles." The boys voice grows intense and suspicious. "And burning hasn't been practiced since the days of the mad king as punishment. It's not the law."

"If there's no one around here for miles, what are you doing here?" Bess asks, dodging the question. Her fingers have gripped the blanket so hard her knuckles are white. She curses; the man should have cut out her tongue instead of her fingers so she couldn't make fool comments.

The boy, thankfully, takes up the change of topic, though he still throws her a mistrustful glance. "We're goin' to Castle Black," he says slowly. "You're coming with us."

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**A/N **Please review! Tyrion next chapter and Castle Black!


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